NEGLECTED MASTERPIECE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 915, 22 February 1957, Page 14

NEGLECTED MASTERPIECE

"TWO important works by one of the | leading modern composers, Luigi Dallapiccola, are to be broadcast next week-the Variations for Orchestra (YCs, Saturday, March 2, 9.30 p.m.), and Songs of Captivity (2YC, Sunday, March 3, 10.30 p.m.). The Variations have been praised as among the most striking the Louisville Orchestra has played in their present series of new works. Dallapiccola was born in Italy in 1904, and is one of the few Italian composers who have consistently used Schonberg’s 12-tone system. Another unusual work to be heard this Saturday (YCs, February 23, 10.0 approx.), is The Abbot, by Charles Koechlin. Koechlin, who died in 1951, was a musical solitary, and during his life is said never to have expressed regret that few of his works were published and that they were seldom performed. But of his work the English critic Wilfred Mellers writes: "I grow increasingly convinced that Koechlin is among the very select number of contemporary composers who really matter." Koechlin studied under Faure and shares some of his master’s musical sensibility. The Abbot, an enormous, semimystical creation, is recognised as his masterpiece. The second part of it is hardly ever performed, and is not included in the broadcast. "It is one of the few masterpieces of the 20th century," writes Mellers. He adds that the innocence of this music "may provide at times a source of refinement which other contemporary composers, even the | greater ones, cannot offer."